it will be caught up in a fatal morass, a stinking mess consisting of its own doubts and agitations

[...] I even think that the best definition of man is: a biped, ungrateful. [...]

[...] give him such economic prosperity that he'll have nothing left to do but sleep, eat pastries, and busy himself with assuring the continuance of world history. And even then [...] He'll even risk his pastries and deliberately choose the most pernicious nonsense [...]

Man loves to create [...] But when, then, does he also passionately love destruction and chaos? Tell me that! [...] Can it be that he is so dedicated to destruction and chaos [...], because is himself instinctively afraid of achieving his goal and completing the edifice he is constructing? [...]

[...] man is a flighty, deplorable creature, and, like a chess player, he may be fond only of the process of achieving the goal, rather than of the goal itself. [...] perhaps the only goal toward which mankind is striving on earth consists of nothing but the continuity of the process of achieving--in other words, of life itself, and not the goal proper [...]

[...] he sails across oceans, he sacrifices his life in this quest, but, I would swear, he's somehow afraid of really finding, discovering it. For he feels that, as soon as he finds it, there will be nothing to search for. [...] He is fond of striving toward achievement, but not so very fond of the achieveent itself [...]

a brazen fop who bars your way with arms akimbo, spitting